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Critical Jim--The Hit Man |
Bowling for Columbine
(2002)
From an idea by filmmaker and author Michael Moore
Vox Populi
No doubt about it-Michael Moore knows exactly who he is. In an interview with Britain's The Guardian, he said, "I believe that I am in the mainstream of middle America." But, he adds, he is not the people's filmmaker. "I just set out to make a movie that I'd like to go see on a Friday night. When I make a film, I'm not doing it purely for political reasons."
Even if you're not acquainted with the plain-sounding name, you've almost surely heard some of the offbeat, memorable titles attached to Moore's books and movies: Bowling for Columbine, Roger and Me, Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, Dude Where's My Country, and others. He has also had an Emmy winning TV news magazine, TV Nation, and another Emmy nominated show, The Awful Truth.
Moore was born in Flint, Michigan into a General Motors family-his father and most of his relatives were bluecollar employees of the world's largest corporation. At age eighteen, Moore ran for, and won, a seat on the local school board. At 22, he founded The Flint Voice, which he edited for ten years. Under his stewardship The Flint Voice became one of the most highly regarded alternative newspapers in the country.
With the 1989 debut of Roger and Me, his first feature-length film, Moore attained near-legendary status as a documentary filmmaker. In it, he doggedly pursues GM president, Roger Smith to discuss the effect of GM's downsizing on Flint. It appeared on the Ten Best Films of the Year lists of more than 100 critics and on more than a few Ten Best Films of the Decade lists. It won almost every award given out by critics for that year. And, it is the highest grossing documentary to date.
Moore has channeled his success into a number of different projects. He founded the Center for Alternative Media, which has given out more than half a million dollars in grants. He's also an active backer of, and the voice for, many social causes. A quick visit to his website, www.michaelmoore.com, provides the details. His books are all within the top 5,900 at Amazon, with the seven-year old Dude Where's My Country near the top 200.
Thirteen years after Roger and Me, Moore is still trying to catch up with Roger Smith. In his 2002 hit documentary, Bowling for Columbine, Moore refers to the meeting that never was and issues an offhand challenge to Smith that he, Moore, is still seeking answers. Here is a filmmaker who takes his movies seriously. Friday night entertainment or not, the subjects he tackles should be taken seriously. No matter on which side of the question you happen to fall, or whether you subscribe to his politics or you don't, you have to admire this independently-minded guy, with the talent to make entertainment a thinking person's domain, while still making money for the studio.
The Movie
"Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?" This is the tagline for Bowling for Columbine. It's also the first thing you see after the DVD boots up-yellow banners with black lettering on the top and bottom of the screen. In the middle, black and white footage, apparently resurrected from the ancient fifties, shows singles and couples happily in the thrall of bowling. The music overlay features the revved-up Teenage Fan Club singing, "Some people say that bowling alleys got big lanes…Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling." Right away, you know two things about this movie: it's going to be different, and it's going to challenge you.
Bowling for Columbine is Michael Moore's shot at explaining America's love of guns and violence. He presents his case in a collage of film, animation, stills, loud music and sounds, louder silences, laughter, and heart-clenching chills.
BFC probably started out in another direction. In the DVD comments, Moore explains that he planned to tell one story-tie in the killings at Columbine High School, in a suburb of Denver, with the prevalence of guns in our culture. But, in the three years it took to research and film the movie, his questions led to some unexpected answers, which, in turn, were followed by more questions leading to more unexpected answers. In the end, Moore found he needed a larger canvas on which to paint his picture.
Bowling goes beyond the basics of the continuing gun controversy, speeding past the issues we've been prodded with for years: children growing up with toy guns, children growing up with real guns, ease of gun ownership, the infatuation with automatic weapons, and more. It peels back layer after layer of argument, like the proverbial onion, by constantly asking why and attempting to uncover further answers that makes sense. Eventually the question evolves from, "How can two high school seniors kill twelve schoolmates and a teacher, then turn the guns on themselves?" and broadens to, "Are the powers-that-be using fear to manipulate Americans, to bring us to a self-protective state of mind that equates gun use with salvation?" Sounds like a paranoid fantasy too extreme to make a case for. But, Moore does present an argument that is convincing, although by no means conclusive.
Along the way, he does what he does best-being obsessively persistent until he gets the response or makes the point he wants to make. This results in some amazing footage. In one sequence, he brings two former Columbine students, both shot during the massacre and still with the bullets in their bodies, to K-Mart headquarters, in Troy, Michigan. The boys who committed the massacre, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had purchased their ammunition at the local K-Mart. After several unsuccessful visits to see the president of K-Mart on the pretense of returning the bullets for a refund-their real mission was to persuade K-Mart to stop selling ammunition-they are stunned and nearly speechless when a PR person announces to the assembled news media that K-Mart has changed its policy and will no longer sell ammunition.
At another point Moore gets himself invited to National Rifle Association president Charleton Heston's estate to ask the former movie star his views on guns. After Heston admits he's never been the victim of a crime, nor has his estate ever been robbed, Moore asks why he keeps loaded guns on his estate. Heston looks like a man for whom solid ground has just turned muddy. "Self-defense" and "protection," are the only answers he can muster. Moore keeps prodding, asking Heston why he came to a gun rally in Denver only ten days after the shootings at Columbine High School in nearby Littleton. Moore also wants to know why Heston came to Flint for another gun rally just a few days after a six-year old girl was shot and killed in school by a six-year old boy who had found a loaded gun in his uncle's house. Heston lamely replies that he had nothing to do with that, those commitments were just a matter of scheduling. Moore reminds him that officials of both cities pleaded with him to postpone the NRA rallies. At this point, Heston looks so befuddled, one might feel sorry for him but for his blatant disregard for the feelings of the residents of Denver and Flint. When Moore asks if Heston wishes to apologize to those people. Heston leans forward with an incredulous expression and loudly blurts, "Me? Apologize?" Heston has made Moore's point for him.
By far though, the most chilling footage in the film does not come from Moore or his cameraman. It is the murky, gray videotape from the security cameras at the Columbine High School library and the cafeteria on the day of the massacre. We helplessly observe the crush of students and teachers as they scurry under tables, trying to find shelter from the student killers. A moment later, Harris and Klebold enter the frame and take stock of their captives. The impact of watching the soundless tape and imagining the thoughts behind the terrified faces of students and faculty, is far more harrowing than any similar scene from a fiction film. This is real, very real, and Moore has put it in his movie because he knows we need to see violence that hasn't been prettied up.
Why the title, Bowling for Columbine? Before the sequence at Columbine High begins, we learn that, at 6 a.m. on the morning of the massacre, Harris and Kelbold blithely went to a bowling alley to throw a few frames before going to school.
A diverse range of musical styles punctuates the scenes and supplies much of the energy and the irony that's infused throughout the film. Moore has drawn the score from such sources as Irving Berlin, The Beatles, Marilyn Manson, Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood), and others.
Above, Moore is quoted, saying, "I just set out to make a movie that I'd like to go see on a Friday night." Such is his popularity, and the impact of his films, that he just may be the first documentary filmmaker to be turned away from a Friday night showing of his own film because the theater is sold out.
To Die For
(1995)
Screenplay: Buck Henry
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Nicole Kidman: Suzanne Stone Moretto; Matt Dillon: Larry Moretto; Joaquin Phoenix: Jimmy Emmett; Casey Affleck: Russell Hines; Alison Folland: Lydia Mertz; Illeana Douglas: Janice Moretto
At Home in the World of ...Words
Joyce Maynard knows where to find a story and what to do with it when she does. She once said about her childhood, "Our family sport was writing." In many cases, Maynard draws her stories from her experiences, thoughts, opinions, memories-everything and anything that touches her. What she does with all of this material is practice her family's sport-she writes about her life.
Maynard attended the exclusive prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy, as a member of its first co-ed class. Even at that age, she had a portfolio of clippings from her regular contributions to Seventeen magazine. After entering Yale in 1971, Maynard sent some of her clippings to the New York Times Magazine with a request to the editors that they consider her as a contributor. The Times wisely answered yes and in 1972, while still a freshman, The Sunday Times Magazine published her essay, "An Eighteen-Year Old Looks Back on Life". It received the coveted cover story spot and drew national attention. "I came home to four bags of mail at the foot of my dorm room," Maynard recalled. The mail included letters of praise, offers to write, and requests for interviews. One of the mailbags also contained a one-page letter from the reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. He was impressed by her writing but warned her of the dangers of sudden publicity. The two struck up a regular correspondence, and when her freshman year ended Maynard dropped out of Yale to move in with the 53-year old Salinger. She stayed for nearly a year. Respecting Salinger's need for privacy, Maynard kept mum about their relationship for twenty-seven years, until she broke her silence in her 1999 memoir, At Home In The World.
At age nineteen, while still living with Salinger, Maynard published her first book, Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties. Through the intervening years she has written other memoirs chronicling her life at various stages. But, she's more versatile than that. The prolific Maynard has authored hundreds of articles, essays, opinion pieces, and columns, including the nationally syndicated "Domestic Affairs," which ran for eight years. She has ventured into fiction, as well, with novels for both children and adults, including the commercially successful, To Die For, which spawned the movie of the same name.
As if that were not enough, Maynard also conducts essay and memoir writing workshops…in her own home. She is truly a writer whose words are her life and whose life is her words.
The Movie
On May 1, 1990, at ten minutes after ten at night, Pamela Smart, returning from a school meeting in Hampton, thirty-five miles away, parked her car in the garage of the Derry, New Hampshire, condo development where she lived with her husband, Greg. She noticed the porch light wasn't on, something Greg always did so she would feel safe walking to their unit. Upon entering, Smart saw Greg lying face down, partly in the hallway, partly in the adjoining dining room. Blood had pooled around his still figure. Nearby, a candlestick and a pillow lay on the floor. Smart ran to her neighbors, screaming for help. At least two of them called 911 while two others went to check out the Smart's unit. Inside, they confirmed what Pamela had seen, the inert body of Greg Smart.
Less than a month and a half later, police investigators had learned that Pamela Smart had planned the murder and convinced her fifteen-year old lover to carry it out, along with his friends. Less than a year after the murder, the jury brought back a guilty verdict, sentencing Smart to life without parole as an accomplice to the first-degree murder of her husband.
Joyce Maynard, when interviewed about her book, To Die For, on which the movie is based, said, "Well, the novel is certainly fiction, I say swiftly." She adds, "I knew that there were a lot of questions about what went on between Pam Smart and this fifteen-year old boy that would never be told in any interview. And so, I made up my own story, very loosely inspired by that case. But, I actually took pains not to research the real case because I sometimes feel that you'll find out more from fiction than from non-fiction reporting."
For too long, Nicole Kidman had been labeled as nothing more than Tom Cruise's wife. She had had some good, but not outstanding performances in some good, but not outstanding movies. But, To Die For was the perfect vehicle for her. Her portrayal of Suzanne Stone Moretto, the Pamela Smart character, brought her out from behind Tom's shadow and into the sunlight of a breakout performance.
The movie, like the book, is fiction, but broadly based on the facts of the Smart case. The similarities are abundant and obvious. Pamela Smart, like her movie alter-ego, Suzanne, wanted to break into broadcasting and wound up with a starring role in a crime she created. Everything began with her and revolved around her, and everyone involved with her were merely supporting players…until the cops came along. Buck Henry's screenplay and Gus Van Sant's directing recognize that the power of this one-protagonist story lies with the Moretto/Smart character. They turn the show over to Kidman, and their faith in her talent is amply rewarded.
Imagine a woman, ambitious, ruthless, obsessively compulsive (or, perhaps, the other way around) and, at the same time, as bright as a Springtime garden and perky as a hotel recreation director. What would she be like: her expressions, her body language, the words she chooses when talking to people? These contradictions provide a role requiring a wide range of emotions. Kidman gets it exactly right-perfectly balancing psychosis and normalcy, and she does it with seemingly little effort. Within her first ten seconds on screen, Suzanne Stone Moretto has become a living, breathing, conniving, and slightly daffy creature of inconsistency. If you admire Kidman's work and haven't seen this movie, To Die For is her breakout performance and one well worth watching. If you have seen it, it's worth seeing again.
Supporting Kidman's lead is Matt Dillon playing the Greg Smart role of adoring, naive husband Larry Moretto, and playing it nicely against his usual hard-guy type. The rest of the cast, a mix of veterans and newcomers, all hold their own. In the pivotal roles of Jimmy Emmett, her teenage lover, and Russell Hines, his friend, Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck perhaps go a little overboard. Their portrayal of teens dumb enough to be so easily manipulated, seems to elevate Beavis and Butthead to the status of MIT physics professors. That may have been their acting or it may have been the directing --To Die For was Affleck's feature film debut, Phoenix had a little more experience, but nothing of note. Either way, it was a distraction, but not enough of one to detract from the overall excellence of this movie.
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